The Suspect

Fleet Street star Kate Waters’s reporting has helped British police crack some extremely disturbing cases, but she faces what could be her toughest one yet in bestseller Barton’s top-shelf third psychological thriller (after 2017’s The Child). When the parents of 18-year-old Alexandra O’Connor, who’s backpacking in Thailand with an 18-year-old female friend, fail to hear from Alex after a week, they alert the police. Kate’s longtime police source, Det. Insp. Bob Sparkes, tells her about the two missing teenage girls, in the hope that Kate will write a story that “might winkle them out of whichever bar they’re sitting in.” Kate keenly identifies with the concerned parents, since her estranged older son, Jake, has been in Thailand for the past two years after inexplicably dropping out of university. But what starts as a routine story soon proves otherwise, sending Kate and her journalistic frenemies to Thailand in search of answers. The exceedingly twisty tale that follows will test Kate, and her painfully conflicting loyalties, to the limit. Barton’s many fans will be rewarded. Agent: Madeleine Milburn, Madeleine Milburn Literary (U.K.). (Jan.)